102 



TWENTY-NINTH FRUIT-GROWERS' CONVENTION. 



every carton should have the price conspicuously printed upon it, and 

 that the trade should be given to understand that they must handle the 

 raisins for that price or not at all. (Applause.) Through that agency 

 alone an enormous consumption in California would be assured, and 

 right in the city of Fresno the consumption might be increased, I 

 would say, ten, twenty, or one hundred fold. We all know what it 

 means. I am satisfied that in the city of London — and not a raisin 

 can be raised nearer that city than hundreds of miles — raisins can be 

 bought in the open market to-day for less money than they can be pur- 

 chased for at retail in the city of Fresno. Do I need to tell an intelli- 

 gent audience in California that those conditions should be corrected? 

 Need I tell you that the proper exercise of our intelligence and of the 

 privileges which we enjoy as a free and enlightened people will correct 

 this most remarkable, this most amazing situation? 



Next, I want to come to my old friend Berwick. If ever there was a 

 man eminently fitted, in my judgment, to carry forward the project, in 

 behalf of the common people, of getting the products of the soil to the 

 consumer in remote parts of the country, to the individual who needs 

 the goods, to those families of the East, of the North, and of the South 

 who would be glad to take this product with which we are overloaded 

 and use it not only — as Dr. Rowell told us this afternoon — as a luxury, 

 but as a delightful food, a most wholesome food — he is the man. Through 

 the agency of the parcels post, friends, I look for great things — if we 

 ever get it. I believe that if we had a i:)arcels post, on the same basis 

 that Great Britain has and enjoys, that Germany enjoys, that France 

 enjoys, and that many countries of the earth enjoy, there would be no 

 trouble, Mr. White, about the quantity of raisins in California. (Ap- 

 plause.) 



The problem now which, to my mind, confronts us is this — let all 

 thought, in the San Joaquin Valley at least, be directed to this one 

 proposition: to cheapening the means of transportation from the pro- 

 ducer to the consumer, upon the avenues of trade — by cheaper com- 

 munication, by the parcels post, if you please, and by other means of 

 communication; and then let us recognize, also, that we must have 

 some elasticity to our markets and our prices, so that we may be ready, 

 without sacrificing ourselves, to at all times accommodate the prices of 

 our goods to the conditions of the consumer. When these things have 

 been accomplished, we shall hear no more of the doleful cry of overpro- 

 duction; but, on the contrary, we will find the American citizen, at 

 least, standing side by side in the consumption of raisins with his 

 distant brother of the British Isles, who, though producing no raisins 

 at all, consumes four times the quantity which we consume. When 

 these things are accomplished, we will have placed the grower of raisins, 

 we will have placed the soil-tiller and the soil-owner of central Call- 



